


An Epilogue About a Prologue Written in (not that it matters) Twin City, Georgia

by proxydialogue



Series: The In-between Verse [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Meta, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:25:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the story does not end, because endings are bogus, but simply ceases to be written down (sort of).</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Epilogue About a Prologue Written in (not that it matters) Twin City, Georgia

_The thing about endings_ , Sam thought, wrapping his hand around a bottle, _is that they’re crap. They never happen_. 

The dull rumble of the television was about a million miles away, and Dean was over there with it, talking in a likewise dull rumble with Cas. Sam had been banished to the corner to think by himself, to sit at this crappy motel table and philosophize and drink his beer. Because, according to Dean, Sam was a party pooper when he got drunk; which only made sense. Alcohol was a depressant. Things like death and endings were depressing, so really the two went hand in hand. And Sam had told Dean as much. 

Dean had responded that Sam’s face was a depressant and if he didn’t have anything nice to say, he should go sit in the corner. So in the corner Sam now sat, his chin in his hands, his brain thinking about how the whole of human language and culture and mythology and everything was a lie. He pushed a pathetic, motel pen around the table as he thought. 

_Pondered _, really.__

Because, see, all stuff in the world was built on the assumption that things did end. Sentences had periods after them. There was the whole past-tense deal in language, to indicate that things had gone by and would never come back. Cultures were measured by their rise and their fall and history said things like: “Oh, the Roman Empire was great until suddenly it was over.” Like it really _was_ over. Like Rome wasn’t there anymore. 

Well, maybe it didn’t quite imply that. But still …Sam lost the thread. 

He took a few more swallows of his beer. He suspected that the thread was probably still around somewhere. Floating at the bottom of the bottle, for instance. If he waited long enough it would come back to him.

Dean was reclined like _he_ was the Emperor of Rome on the motel bed. Dean would have done well in Rome, all those orgies and all that wine. And togas? Well, it would have been the fashion then, a Roman Dean in Rome would likely have worn a toga.

 _Ew_. Togas. 

Cas was with them tonight. He was holding a beer in his hand, gingerly like it might explode if he jostled it too much, and sitting on the edge of Dean’s bed watching the television. Cas was a really great guy. He had this internal altruism clock that always seemed to be pointing at _what’s best for Dean_. Even when he clearly had his own disasters going on. Although, sometimes Sam wondered—

While Sam was pretty sure that Cas didn’t stick around _because_ he wanted in Dean’s pants…anyone else who had stuck around this long and put up with half of the crap from Dean that Cas put up with would have been in Dean’s pants twice already. Dean was not picky about whom he invited into his pants. And Sam got the feeling that if Dean offered, Cas would not decline. 

Which raised a question of angelic sexuality. Did angels—should he leave? Oh man, maybe they weren’t together yet because Sam was always hanging around being a third wheel? Did Dean have sex with dudes? Angels? Dude angels? 

Was Cas a dude? 

_Wait_.

 _Ew_. Dean. Sex. 

Which reminded him. He was pissed about endings. 

All mythologies took story form, right? And stories, the way that they were always told, had endings. Furthermore, most mythologies that Sam had ever heard ended with some kind of an ultimate end. The Apocalypse. Ragnarok. Nirvana—which had to be the most confusing ending he’d ever heard and hell if he understood it (life was a race track you drove around and around over and over, stuck in the cycle of reincarnation, until eventually you found your way off the track and then, _poof_ , nothing). But he and Dean had just averted the apocalypse, which meant that even the big endings never needed to happen. From that, the only logical conclusion was that all endings were lies. Which meant that Sam’s whole life was a lie. Because, thanks to God (and Chuck, he supposed, by association and being God’s writer-bitch) Sam’s life was a story. 

And Sam was mad about it. And yeah, he was mad at God too. 

How would _God _feel if some asshole with a pen started writing _His___ existence down and shaping it into some dumb depressing story that seemed like it was all leading up to something until it wasn’t because morals needed endings and endings were crap?

Sam finished his beer and put the empty bottle on the floor next to all the other empty bottles. He wanted another one but, as he’d already established that Dean and Cas were a million miles away and the beer was on the other side of Dean and Cas, it really wasn’t worth the effort. And if he got up Dean would probably yell at him anyway. He was in a time out or whatever. 

…

 _This pen_ probably wrote like shit. All free pens wrote like shit, except the pens that came from banks. But not the ones they gave out, the ones everyone stole by accident after cashing checks. 

Not that Sam had a desperate need for a great pen at the moment. 

…

In fact, _really_ , since it would make him an asshole anyway, a crappy pen would _totally_ do. If he were going to, say, write a story about God. And then write God out of it just to be mean, but let the story keep going since he knew that endings weren’t real…He could write the real never-ending story. 

He didn’t even need to write the whole thing. Just enough. Just for a little vindication. 

Sam flipped over the little paper brochure about fire emergency protocol and uncapped the pen. 

First, he needed a prologue. All good stories had one of those. 

 

 

_Once upon a time there was a God who must have been bored out his mind watching giant stars explode and turn into smaller stars or super giant stars implode and turn into holes to eat the smaller stars—which sounds exciting but probably isn’t after a few millennia—and decided that he wanted some things to mean something. He wanted big meanings._

_So he created Angels, and the World, and Humans. And then he created Endings to spice things up a bit._

_Last, he created Metaphors so that Endings could be explained better, since he realized that, initially, Endings made no sense, and they were crap, and if he wanted people to buy into them he was going to have to make them sound more important than they were._

 

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, why does your kind bother with this sort of entertainment?” 

Dean looked over to where Castiel had perched himself on the edge of the bed. His back was facing Dean, but his head was turned to the TV, putting his face in profile. He was frowning and his eyes were crinkled up thoughtfully. 

“What?” 

Cas gestured at the television. 

“It is an idiom in your culture,” he explained. “You have these moving pictures, composed originally of thousands of single photographs, and if a single one is worth a thousand words, isn’t the dialogue in the movie redundant?” 

Dean wondered if Castiel had always been a giant nerd who thought about these things, or if it was just a side effect of being a gazillion years old. 

“Cas, it’s a saying, not some great holy truth of the world. And silent movies suck.” He pulled himself upright and crossed his legs underneath him so he could lean forward. “Don’t you have sayings in Enochian?” 

Cas turned away from the TV to face Dean. His head tipped at that wouldn’t-I-make-such-a-great-canary angle. 

“Yes. But they are all great holy truths of the world.” 

Dean grabbed the TV remote and turned down the volume. 

“Bullshit. Tell me one.” 

Castiel’s mouth tipped into lopsided patience. 

“God does not ring a bell more than once,” he said. 

“That makes no fucking sense.” 

“It is as direct a translation as I can manage.” 

“Well it’s stupid. Try a different one.” 

 

_And out of Endings came all sorts of sucky things. Death, and afternoon television, and apocalypses, and **lying people** , who invented the lie in order to achieve more specific Ends, like money or sex or world leadership positions. And that’s why politicians are also God’s fault. _

_But mostly the problem with Endings was death. Since death made people sad. The living people missed the dead people. And the dead people, all jammed up inside their private little Heavens, missed the living people. Which is how loneliness happened._

_And fear, because people started realizing that someday **they** were going to die too._

 

 

Castiel tipped his head, the wrinkles around his eyes resuming. His eyes trained on Dean, like he might pull his next answer out of the math of Dean’s face. He felt light hearted, it had been a sunny day and no one was trying to kill his friends. 

Cas shifted further up the bed, brushing away some of the distance that sometimes existed (and sometimes didn’t) between himself and Dean. 

He smirked. 

“God writes postcards in the places they are meant to arrive.” 

Dean looked appalled. 

“Your catch-phrases suck. Why would God write a postcard? _Who_ would God write a postcard to?”

Cas grinned. 

“Perhaps He thought to test your saying. How many words do you think can fit on the back of a postcard? They are usually photographs of something.” 

Dean stared at his angel and wondered when he’d become such a wiseass. He pointed a finger and leaned closer (more of that distance gone). 

“When did you become such a wiseass?” 

Cas smiled. 

“I am thousands of years old, Dean. By your standards, my ass has almost always been wise.” 

 

_It was one of those chain reaction accidents. Actually, it was the first chain reaction accident. All those things knocking into other things that knocked into other things until the whole thing was so complicated no one would ever be able to understand it and stuff like weather and crop circles and Chaos Theory just came about. And there was God, who sure as hell wasn’t bored anymore because now he was spending all his time doing damage control, in the middle of it. He could have stopped it all, since he’d made Endings, but it would have taken something really really huge, something complex and perfectly planned._

_—and he was tired._

_Meanwhile, people started making up their own stories to deal with their loneliness and their fear. Mythology was born, and a whole new slew of Endings, crafted out of speculation and a backwards desire for safety._

_Even God’s first children, his angels, did it. Slowly, a little at a time, they dreamed up the prophecies, gave their Father the credit, and eventually, without realizing it, came up with the very huge plan God needed to fix his mistake. But by that time the window for take-backs had passed. And God found that, even if he’d wanted the end, it wasn’t about him anymore._

_His children had become creators themselves. And they were using their new stories to explain away the most beautiful gift God had given them. They were reinventing God himself, giving him omniscience and power, handing over their free will because they didn’t want to be afraid anymore._

 

Dean laughed and threw his arm easily around Castiel’s shoulder, pulled Cas in to sit next to him. 

“You’re a fuckin’ freak, Cas,” he said. The beer was making his insides fuzzy, Cas made his outsides warm, and Dean was feeling a peaceful sort of temporary truce with all the weirdness in his life. He poked Cas in the chest when he noticed the titled smile had faded. “Hey, I meant that in a good way.” 

There was still a little bit of distance. And for no reason at all, Cas was suddenly terrified of tipping into that distance and never being able to crawl back out. Of falling so far away he could never get close again. 

Cas reached up and grabbed the collar of Dean’s shirt. 

“I have always meant to protect you,” he said. He was looking at Dean’s mouth, nearly panicked. “But sometimes,” he swallowed, “I also want to take you apart.” His grip loosened and he frowned. “No. That is not what I meant to say.” Cas started to pull away, which might have been a fatal mistake, it might have been that final tumble. 

But Dean made a fist in his tie. 

“I get it,” he mumbled, and kissed the dude because it seemed like the thing to do. 

Cas was pleased. He forgot, sometimes, that humans weren’t all made of glass. He climbed forward and pushed at Dean until the world rocked onto its side. He had put this body together, if Dean gave him permission he was going reach inside until it gasped and shuddered apart.

 

_God had to stop meddling. He realized he had to let his children go. And because he had created Endings to give meanings to things, his children all meant something big to him. It pained him, it saddened him, to think of his poor children alone._

_He couldn’t leave right away. He wanted to help a little bit more, to put some comfort in the pain. But, since all things now ended, he had to work against time. He had to make extra moments to squeeze in between all the things that had big meanings._

_So God went to Earth. And made himself a writer._

_It was just for a little while. Just long enough to really know about being lonely and being afraid._

 

 

Sam was feeling suddenly sober. He stopped the pen and looked away from what he’d written. 

His brother and an angel were face to face, horizontally, on the bed. Cas was sitting on Dean’s stomach and Dean was clutching Cas’ tie. They were two inches apart, staring at each other like a bomb had gone off between them. Castiel’s lip look bitten, Dean looked like maybe he wanted another bite. But it was all so much a part of the point Sam couldn’t even be grossed out. 

This, Sam realized, looking back down at his chicken scratch, was where the story actually started. It wasn’t him writing God away at all, it was…it just was. It was going to be a small, short story, about God being practically human, and lonely, and sad. Giving a damn about everything because, in the end, he couldn’t help it. Because he’d invented endings, and along with endings came separation, and the realization that people you knew weren’t going to be around forever. And then, because those people meant something, you wanted to keep them, and they wanted to keep you, and that desire was a big, massive, deal. 

God created endings on purpose, maybe, and then maybe one of the accidents was love. 

Or maybe he’d known the whole time what would happen. And the worst thing he could have ever done for His world was also the best thing. 

There was room still, in the margins of the paper. Sam hunched forward and started to scratch the pen again, like a chisel this time. 

 

 

_In Farmington, New Hampshire a young man with a pen behind his ear walked into a diner with no name on Mechanic Street._


End file.
